Hi! I'm Jaeheon Shim, a computer programmer and technology enthusiast who lives in Columbus, Indiana. I like contributing to open-source development projects on GitHub, working on my own web-based applications, and writing articles on my blog Learn The Technology. In my free time, I manage CAMEO's public website and provide free tech assistance to friends and family :).

How To Create an Insanely Strong Password

November 21, 2018

So. You’ve decided that your wimpy 8 character password isn’t enough, and now you’re ready to take it to the next level. You’re in the right place. This article will teach you how to create a password so strong to the point where it is impractical.

The Best Password is the One You Can’t Remember

You’ve probably been told at one point to not share your password with anybody, and probably already knew that because of common sense. Well, to take things to the next level, you’re going to have to step your game up a notch. After you create this insanely strong password, even you are not allowed to memorize it. If you do, you must change that password immediately and replace it with another insanely strong password.

So… how are you supposed to log in to your accounts you ask?

Simple (Actually not simple). From now on, you’ll need to use a password manager to store all your passwords without you managing them. Thinking about online services such as LastPass? Forget about it. These online services store your passwords in a server, and that server can be hacked. If it does get hacked, the hacker now has control over everything in your life, no matter how strong your password is. You’ll have to invest in a hardware password manager, that does not even connect to the internet. KeePass is a good option if you just have a spare USB drive laying around, but if you’re willing to spend some extra money on a better solution, consider investing in a “mooltipass“. This is a hardware password solution that allows you to store your passwords completely offline.

The Mooltipass mini hardware password manager.

Different Passwords for All of Your Accounts

You should already be doing this, but I can almost guarantee that more than half of the people reading this use the same password for all of their accounts. First, this goes against the “best password is the one you can’t remember” rule, and as I’ve mentioned countless times before, this is one of the worst security mistakes to make. So go ahead and take the effort to change all of your passwords to different ones. (But don’t do it yet, I still have a few more things to discuss.

Long, Strong Passwords.

If you can memorize your password, it is way too short. Your password should not be a short sequence, no matter whether it is random or not. For comparison, go to this website to see exactly how strong your password is. You might be shocked at the results! But your password’s security is not proportional to its length. For example, your password could be as long as “ilikeplayingfortniteveryday“, but believe it or not, that could be cracked by a hacker that has some information about you. It doesn’t even contain any numbers or symbols! Take the extra time to type in a long password every time you log in, and save yourself from attacks.

Randomness Is Important

Since this is a guide about how to create an insanely strong password, you can’t use any words or number sequences that are common, such as 1234. Your password has to be completely random. This is an example of a bad password: “ihaveadream2018”. It contains phrases that make sense and the current year. This would be an example of an ok password: “jK3$sd@F”. It’s still crackable in 9 hours according to howsecureismypassword.net, but it’s a good start. One more thing: You should use a random pattern generator instead of making up the patterns yourself because humans have proven to be bad at randomness.

Personal Information

No. Do not put personal information in your password. As I mentioned above, hackers could easily guess a password with your personal information in it by just doing a quick search on you. And if you set your password as your social security number and it gets cracked, you’ll have much bigger matters on your hands.

Special Characters

Yes, you must include special characters in your password. Adding special characters greatly increases the number of combinations your password fits in, thus greatly increasing the amount of time it takes a hacker to crack it.

This Is Getting Ridiculous

To make your password truly insanely strong, you need to include combinations including Unicode characters as well. Since there are 132,000 Unicode characters in existence right now, this makes your password like a combination lock with 132,000 digits. Here is an example of an ok password containing Unicode characters: “%Ð¼ÈH&6njw³¹”. You can forget about being able to type your password, as most of these characters are not even found on the standard keyboard. But since you’re using a hardware password manager, you can just copy and paste it (Which is also insecure, but what other options do we have).

So. Are you done formulating your insanely strong password? I am, and this is what I came up with:

üMýHv4ò}óá^Ý¬j£åtÊ/a¢7Â[H¢F¶Ö<w~YJz=¬¾

This password would take a computer 254 UNVIGINTILLION YEARS to crack. I can’t even pronounce that number. You can now rest in peace knowing that your accounts are properly secured… right? Wrong. Unfortunately, you can still get hacked by phishing, or if the company’s servers get hacked (This shouldn’t be a big problem now though since your passwords are all different). However, I’m betting that your password won’t get cracked by a computer in the lifetime of planet earth if you followed my instructions*.

*Please don’t sue me based on this information, I am not responsible for your online security.